Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again. Luke 6:38
When I first entered the ministry my total worldly possessions consisted of not much more than a few clothes crammed into a little cardboard suitcase. The total receipts from my first week of preaching was only about thirty cents. Certainly I was not entering the ministry for the money.
However, I was soon to learn that it takes money to build churches, to travel in missionary work, and to reach souls with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Modern radio and television stations, printing presses, large church buildings and Bible colleges cost a lot of money. It is enough to stagger the imagination of a boy who grew up in a working class southern family during the Depression.
Through the years God has brought me to the place where today I sit at the head of a ministry with assets totaling many millions of dollars. We operate on a budget which demands thousands of dollars daily. Yet my personal possessions still are little more than they were when I began the ministry. I do not own a house or a car. I am content with my salary which is sufficient to live on from week to week. I have simply never permitted myself to love money.
Miracles Don't Just Happen
But God has given me a compassionate love for lost souls and in order to reach these masses I have had to learn to believe God for millions of dollars.
I did not immediately begin believing God for large sums of money. First I had to learn to trust Him for a dollar, then a hundred, and then enough to build a church, a radio station, and finally a network of television stations to beam the gospel to literally millions of people. Like David of the Bible, I had to conquer the bear and the lion before facing the giant.
Miracle Money to Buy a City Block
When I first accepted the pastorate of the South Bend Gospel Tabernacle, one of the first things I did was to move the congregation out of the little inadequate building where they had been for years and into a tent. That summer we conducted an eleven-week revival crusade with services every night under the canvas. Meanwhile I sold the old church building and began to look for a suitable lot on which to build a new church.
I found what I considered to be the nicest location in the city, a square block of vacant land on the main street of town. I went to see the man who owned this choice site at the corner of Michigan and Ewing. He was asking forty- five thousand dollars. By faith I told him, "God wants me to have that lot and I will give you thirty-five thousand for it."
"Now wait a minute," he said. "You can't be putting a price on my property."
"Oh, yes I can. God wants me to build a church there and I want it for thirty-five thousand dollars."
"How do you want to pay for it?"
Now I really stuck my neck out. I told him, "I have ten 140
Miracles and Money
thousand dollars that I will give you now, and if I don't have the rest of the money in sixty days you can keep the ten thousand dollars."
He said, "You've got yourself a deal."
As I walked out of the man's office the devil jumped up onto my shoulder and said, "Now where are you going to get twenty-five thousand dollars in sixty days?" I didn't really worry about it. I was convinced that God was leading me and if I didn't know where the money was coming from, He did.
The property to which I committed myself had had a big "For Sale" sign on it for about a year, but there had been no one seriously interested in buying it before. Now just three or four days after we put the ten thousand dollars down I received a call from a man who said, "I would like to buy a little piece of that city block you bought on the corner of Michigan and Ewing."
I answered, "None of that property is for sale. I am going to put a church on it."
"Now you don't have to be a dog in a manger," he said. "You don't need that much property just for a church." He told me that he knew the property was very expensive and he needed only a hundred feet frontage on the corner.
"All right," I consented. "I will let you have the property you need for thirty thousand dollars."
"Nothing doing!" he huffed. "I'm not going to pay any thirty thousand dollars for a hundred feet."
"O.K." I said. "I will make you one more offer, and this is final. Don't ever call me again unless you have a check for the amount I am going to tell you right now. I will give you the property for twenty-nine thousand dollars."
Miracles Don't Just Happen
"I'll take it," he said. Then he agreed to have the same architect who was designing our church draw up the plans for his furniture store. That way the two buildings would be built to complement one another.
I met the man at the courthouse a day or two later and he gave me a cashier's check for the full $29,000. With that I paid off the balance we owed on our lot and had four thousand dollars with which to begin our new building!
A Church That Faith Built
With only four thousand dollars and absolutely no promise of a loan, we broke ground for a new church building for which the first stage would cost one hundred thousand dollars. In the meantime a spirit of revival continued in our church without a building. Winter came and I moved the growing congregation, now twice its former size, out of the tent and into a rented third-story dance hall downtown. In miraculous ways God supplied the money for our new church as it was being built.
A very old man lived across the street from the lot where we had pitched our tent. I do not believe the man attended church anywhere, but he would sit on his front porch and listen to our services.
One day the old man sent word across the street that he wished to see me. Going over to where he was sitting in his rocking chair I asked, "Sir, what can I do for you?"
"Reverend," he asked, "will you take me to the bank in your car?"
I considered myself a busy pastor with a building program in progress and was just a little perturbed that this gentleman who had not attended our services should put such a demand on my time. However, I agreed to take him.
Miracles and Money
We went to a downtown bank. The old man moved so slowly that it irritated me. There were a lot of things I needed to accomplish that day and here I was wasting my time. As he stood at the teller's window doing his business I sat across the room on a bench near the door.
Unexpectedly the old man turned to me and asked, "Preacher, what do you need?"
I couldn't imagine what the old man had in mind so I answered, "Sir, I don't know that I need anything."
"Well, you need money, don't you?"
"Yes, sir, I do need money for my new church building."
Again he asked, "How much do you need?"
This was becoming embarrassing to me. Other people in the bank were listening and I didn't consider it any of their business how much money I needed. I told him "I don't know exactly how much I need."
The old man motioned for me to come over a little closer and asked, "Would three thousand dollars be enough for today?"
Now I was so excited I could hardly contain myself. Three thousand dollars was the exact amount that I needed to pay construction bills which were due that very day. Here I thought I was just bringing this man to the bank to deposit his Social Security check and instead he gave me the exact amount that I needed, far more money than I would have imagined that he had.
On the way home from the bank he explained that he had been watching me and listening to my sermons and he just wanted to help. He told me to keep up the good work. Several times after that first incident this elderly gentleman
Miracles Don't Just Happen
had me take him to the bank and each time he would give another three or four thousand dollars. Through this the Lord helped us to keep our building program moving ahead when other resources were exhausted.
During the building of the church one of our members, Mr. Shenifield, a bachelor in his sixties, became a real help to me. He would hang around the building project to do whatever little odd jobs were needed. He would also come over to my house to trim the shrubbery, cut the grass, or anything else that needed to be done.
One Monday morning at about seven o'clock our doorbell rang. I answered it and there stood Mr. Shenifield. He was a small hunchbacked man and had an asthmatic condition which caused him to breathe heavily. He asked, "May I come in?"
Groggily I said, "Now, Brother Shenifield, you have all day to talk to me. I worked so hard yesterday and I am so weary. Why would you wake me up at seven o'clock on Monday morning?"
"God told me to."
"Well, if God told you to, come on in."
As he entered the door I noticed that he was carrying a greasy, brown paper sack that looked as if it contained his lunch. Once in the house he said, "I couldn't sleep last night. The Lord kept telling me that I was supposed to help you because you have needs financially."
"The Lord is right," I told him. "We do have needs trying to build this church without a loan and trusting the Lord to send in money on a daily basis. But you know that by listening to me from the pulpit."
"Yes," he said, "but God spoke to me last night and said that I was supposed to help you."
Miracles and Money
Brother Shenifield was a precious man and I didn't want to hurt his feelings. He actually became an integral part of our building program with the numerous odd jobs he accomplished. I consoled him, "I think you help all the time, Brother Shenifield. I appreciate you for your love for the ministry."
"You don't understand," he said. "The Lord told me to go through my house and pick up all the money I had laying around and bring it over to you. It is in this bag."
I graciously accepted his offering, thinking it might amount to fifty or sixty dollars. Then he asked, "May we lay it on the table and count it? I haven't counted it yet."
We went to the dining room table where he turned the bag upside down and shook it. Out fell a small mountain of crumpled ten- and twenty-dollar bills. My eyes simply bulged out. When we finished counting we had exactly three thousand dollars.
I remonstrated with Mr. Shenifield, "Weren't you afraid to have money like this in your house?"
"No," he said. "I hid some here and I hid some there over the years and last night the Lord reminded me where I had hidden money. This is what I found and the Lord says He wants you to have it."
We walked into my office and I showed him a note on my desk which was a bill due that very day for three thousand dollars. The little man wept and said, "Can you imagine that God would speak to such a person as me and that I would have in my house the exact amount of money to meet the need. This is certainly a miracle."
A few years later Brother Shenifield died and went to his eternal reward. I preached his funeral in the new church sanctuary. The property he left behind was willed to the
Miracles Don't Just Happen
church and with it we were able to partly purchase the furniture store next door to our church which was already going out of business. Because the store had been architecturally designed to match our church, it was ideally suited for a much needed educational wing.
Another outstanding miracle of finances came one morning when my doorbell rang. I opened the door and there stood a lady whom I had seen in church a number of times but I wasn't well acquainted with her. She was crying. I said, "Good morning. Is there something wrong?"
"Yes, there is," she blurted. "Your preaching makes me so angry. You preach so hard at the people."
"Well, I'm certainly sorry," I defended myself. "I only preach what I think the people need. I only preach the truth."
"You preach so hard at the people, it makes me so angry," she choked again. "But God told me I must bring you this one thousand dollars." And she handed me a check.
I thanked her and accepted the check saying, "I hope you will learn to like my ministry." Once again the thousand dollars was needed to pay bills for construction which were due that very day.
With many more such miracles God helped us to build our thousand-seat sanctuary. Within six months after the dedication the church was debt free.
Miracle Financing for Our Present Facilities
When I arrived back in the United States to live permanently after having lived overseas as a missionary for several years, I did not have a church or even an office to work out of. I was fifty years old and my whole life had
Miracles and Money
been given to others.
At that crossroads in my life a minister friend of mine told me bluntly, "Sumrall, you're fifty and you're finished."
My only answer to him was, "If you were God I would believe you, but you're not God."
When I prayed seeking direction for my life God assured me that I wasn't finished—I was just getting started!
"But Lord," I prayed. "I have given my total ministry away in America and overseas."
God impressed me, "You sign for whatever challenge I present to you. You are my child and I will cover the financial need every time."
My family and I had donated our house and ten acres of land to build a new church on East Ireland Road in South Bend. We contracted with the Hickey Construction Company to draw up a large building which would serve both the new congregation as well as headquarters for LeSea. With no collateral but faith I signed for the construction to begin.
Immediately I wrote to my friends on my mailing list of
World Harvest magazine. A number of our friends sent
money to us. I also preached everywhere I could and received offerings but still we were far short of the large amount needed to complete the project.
Having just returned from several years on the mission field, I had few contacts and did not know where I could get a loan to complete the building. I had not even applied to a bank for a loan.
One afternoon I was standing in the large half- completed building—just some walls without a roof. It was
Miracles Don't Just Happen
a ghastly looking thing at that stage. It had been raining and everything was wet.
As I stood there wondering how God would provide for the building to be completed, a man wearing rubber boots and a business suit came walking in through the mud. He introduced himself to me as a vice-president of the American National Bank. American National is now a twenty-six story skyscraper downtown, the tallest structure in South Bend.
"Do you have a loan on this building?" the banker asked.
"No, we haven't."
"Do you wish to take out a loan on it?"
I told him that we needed to make a loan but I did not say how desperate our situation really was. We did not have any money at all.
"We have just had a board of directors meeting," the banker said, "and we have decided that we want your business. If we made you a loan would you move your accounts into our bank?"
I didn't want to laugh in the man's face but we didn't have any accounts to amount to anything. We were just operating on a day-to-day basis by faith that God would supply the need.
"Yes, sir," I said. "We will move our accounts into your bank if that's what you would like. But I don't believe you would loan me any money."
"How much money do you need?" he asked. "One hundred forty thousand."
Enthusiastically he exclaimed, "That's exactly the amount we have already agreed to loan you. Come on down
Miracles and Money
and get it."
He loaned us the money. We moved our accounts. And the building was completed to the glory of God. It is now debt free.
The Many Miracles of Television
It has been several years now since God first gave me the mandate to bring one million souls with me to heaven. I knew from the beginning that I would never be able to win a million on a personal basis or just by preaching in churches and auditoriums. I must join hands with thousands of partners and use the mass media. At first I did this through the printed page. Then I made five motion pictures and distributed them worldwide. Next we built a radio station, which is still on the air twenty-four hours a day broadcasting the gospel. Through all of these God was preparing me for the greatest challenge of my life, that of building from scratch a network of full-time Christian television stations.
The one vital obstruction to such a venture of faith has been in the area of finances. Anyone could build a network if he had a billion dollars. But it has taken a long and continuing series of miracles to do it by faith.
If I had fully understood the tremendous expense and complications of television I may have never entered into it. But when God opened the door for me, I didn't ask any questions. I just grabbed hold of the opportunity knowing that the God who had called me to win a million souls was able to make the way.
I was in Washington, D.C., at a radio convention when a man approached me and asked point blank, "Would you like to have a television station?" Having no idea what I
Miracles Don't Just Happen
was getting into, but believing that God was leading, I answered, "Yes, of course."
He said, "Well, I would like to give one to you." This